The tendency to variation in living beings, which all admitted as a matter of fact; the selective influence of conditions, which no one could deny being a matter of fact, when his attention was drawn to the evidence; and the occurrence of great geological changes which also was matter of fact; could be used as the only necessary postulates of a theory of the evolution of plants and animals which, even if not at once, competent to explain all the known facts of biological science, could not be shown to be inconsistent with any.

The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century